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OEATION 



D E L I V E BED BEFORE 



THE CITY AUTHORITIES 

OF BOSTON, 
ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1860, 



EDWARD EYERETT. 



BOSTON: 

GEO. C. EAND & AVERY, CITY PRINTERS, 

NO. 3 CORNHILL. 

1860. 






ORATION 



OKATION 



IE I, I V E HE I) I) E Kill! E 



THE CITY AUTHORITIES 



OF BOSTON, 



ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1860 



i j-^wj 



EDWARD EVERETT. 



BOSTON: 

GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, CITY PRINTERS, 

NO. 3 CORN HILL. 

18 6 0. 






Gift. 






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CITY OF BOSTON 



In Common Council, July 5, 1860. 
Ordered : That the thanks of the City Council be, and they 
are hereby presented to the Hon. Edward Everett, for his able, 
eloquent, and patriotic oration before the Municipal Authorities of 
the City of Boston, on the Eighty-Fourth Anniversary of the 
Declaration of the Independence of the United States of Amer- 
ica, and in vindication of their Republican Institutions, and that 
he be requested to furnish a copy to the City Council for publi- 
cation. 

Sent up for concurrence. 

J. P. BRADLEE, President. 

In Board of Aldermen, July 'J, I860. 
Passed in concurrence. 

OTIS CLAPP, Chairman. 

Approved July 10, 1860. 

F. W. LINCOLN, JR., Mayor. 



ORATION 



Eighty-four years ago this day, the Anglo- American 
Colonies, acting by their delegates to the Congress 
at Philadelphia, formally renounced their allegiance 
to the British Crown and declared their Independ- 
ence. We are assembled, Fellow-Citizens, to com- 
memorate the Anniversary of that great day, and 
the utterance of that momentous Declaration. The 
hand that penned its mighty sentences, and the 
tongue which, with an eloquence that swept all 
before it, sustained it on the floor of the Congress, 
ceased from among the living, at the end of half a 
century, on the same day, almost at the same hour, 
thirty-four years ago. The last survivor of the sign- 
ers, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, closed his vener- 
able career six years later ; — and of the generation 
sufficiently advanced in life to take a part in public 
affairs on the fourth of July, 1776, how few are 
living to hail this eighty-fourth anniversary ! They 
are gone, but their work remains. It has grown in 
interest with the lapse of years, beginning already 



8 



to add to its intrinsic importance those titles to 
respect, which time confers on great events and 
memorable eras, as it hangs its ivy and plants its 
mosses on the solid structures of the Past, — and we 
are now come together to bear our testimony to the 
Day, the Deed, and the Men. We have shut up our 
offices, our warehouses, our workshops, — we have 
escaped from the cares of business, may I not add 
from the dissensions of party, from all that occupies 
and all that divides us, to celebrate, to join in celebrat- 
ing, the Birthday of the Nation, with one heart and 
with one voice. We have come for this year, 1860, 
to do our part in fulfilling the remarkable predic- 
tion of that noble son of Massachusetts, John Adams, 
— who, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, was " the 
Colossus of Independence, — the pillar of its support 
on the floor of Congress." Although the Declaration 
was not adopted by Congress till the fourth of July, 
(which has therefore become the day of the Anni- 
versary,) the Resolution, on which it was founded, 
passed on the second instant. On the following day 
accordingly, John Adams, in a letter to his wife, 
says, " Yesterday the greatest question was decided 
that was ever debated in America, and greater per- 
haps never was nor will be decided among men. A 
resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony, 
that these United States are and of right ought to 
be Free and Independent States." Unable to restrain 



9 



the fulness of his emotions, in another letter to his 
wife, but of the same date, naturally assuming that 
the clay on which the resolution was passed would 
be the day hereafter commemorated, he bursts out 
in this all but inspired strain : — 

The day is passed ; the second day of July, 1776, will be the 
most memorable ' epocha in the History of America. I am apt to 
believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the 
great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated as the 
day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It 
ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, — with shows, games, 
sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this 
Continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore ! 

You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. 
I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will 
cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these 
States. Yet through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravish- 
ing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth 
all the means ; and that posterity will triumph in that day's 
transaction, even although we should rue it, — which I trust in 
God we shall not. 

The time which has elapsed since the great event 
took place is so considerable, — the national experience 
which has since accrued is so varied and significant, 
— the changes in our condition at home and our 
relations abroad are so vast, as to make it a natural 
and highly appropriate subject of inquiry, on the 
recurrence of the Anniversary, how far the hopeful 
auguries, with which our Independence was declared, 



10 



have been fulfilled. Has "the gloom" which, in the 
language of Adams, shrouded the 4th of July, 1776, 
given way on this 4th of July, 1860, " to those rays 
of ravishing light and glory" which he predicted? 
Has " the end," as he fondly believed it would do, 
proved thus far to be " more than worth all the 
means?" Most signally, so far as he individually 
was concerned. He lived himself to enjoy a more 
than Roman triumph, in the result of that day's 
transaction ; to sign with his brother envoys the 
treaty of peace, by which Great Britain acknowl- 
edged the independence of her ancient Colonies; 
to stand before the British throne, the first repre-. 
sentative of the newly constituted Republic ; and 
after having filled its second office in connection with 
him, who, Vhether in peace or in war, could never 
fill any place but the first, — in office as in the 
hearts of his countrymen, — he lived to succeed to 
the great Chief, and closed his honored career, as 
the elective Chief Magistrate of those United States, 
whose independence he had done so much to estab- 
lish ; with the rare additional felicity at the last of 
seeing his son elevated to the same station. 

But the life of an individual is but a span in the 
life of a Nation ; the fortunes of individuals, for good 
or for evil, are but as dust in the balance, compared 
with the growth and prosperity or the decline and 
fall of that greatest of human Personalities, a Com- 



11 



monwealtk. It is, therefore, a more momentous 
inquiry, whether the great design of Providence, 
with reference to our beloved country, of which we 
trace the indications in the recent discovery of the 
Continent, the manner of its settlement by the civil- 
ized races of the earth, the Colonial struggles, the 
establishment of Independence, the formation of a 
constitution of republican government, and its admin- 
istration in peace and war for seventy years, — I 
say, it is a far more important inquiry whether this 
great design of Providence is in a course of steady 
and progressive fulfilment, — marked only by the 
fluctuations, ever visible in the march of human 
affairs, — and authorizing a well-grounded hope of 
further development, in harmony with its auspicious 
beginnings, — or whether there is reason, on the 
other hand, to fear that our short-lived prosperity 
is already (as misgivings at home and disparagement 
abroad have sometimes whispered) on the wane, — 
that we have reached, that we have passed the 
meridian, — and have now to look forward to an 
evening of degeneracy, and the closing in of a ray- 
less and hopeless night of political decline. 

You are justly shocked, fellow-citizens, at the bare 
statement of the ill-omened alternative ; and yet the 
inquiry seems forced on us, by opinions that have 
recently been advanced in high places abroad. In a 
debate in the House of Lords, on the 19th of April, 



12 

on a question relative to the extension of the elective 
franchise in England, (the principle which certainly 
lies at the basis of representative government,) the 
example of the United States, instead of being held 
up for imitation in this respect, as has generally 
been the case, on the subject of popular reforms, was 
referred to as showing not the advantages but the 
evils of an enlarged suffrage. It was emphatically 
asserted or plainly intimated by the person who took 
the lead in the debate, (Earl Grey,) the son of the 
distinguished author of the bill for the Reform of 
Parliament, whose family traditions therefore might 
be expected to be strongly on the side of popular 
right, that, in the United States, since the Revo- 
lutionary period, and by the undue extension of 
the right of suffrage, our elections have become a 
mockery, our legislatures venal, our courts tainted 
with party spirit, our laws ' cobwebs,' which the rich 
and poor alike break through, and the country, and 
the government in all its branches, given over to 
corruption, violence, and a general disregard of public 
morality. 

If these opinions are well founded, then certainly 
we labor under a great delusion in celebrating the 
National Anniversary. Instead of joyous chimes and 
merry peals, responding to the triumphant salvos 
which ushered in the day, the Fourth of July ought 
rather to be commemorated by funeral bells, and 



minute-guns, and dead ' inarches ; and we, instead of 
assembling in this festal hall to congratulate each 
other on its happy return, should have been better 
found in sackcloth and ashes in the house of peni- 
tence and prayer. 

I believe that I shall not wander from the line of 
remark appropriate to the occasion, if I invite you to 
join me in a hasty inquiry, whether these charges 
and intimations are well founded ; whether we have 
thus degenerated from the standard of the Revolution- 
ary age ; whether the salutary checks of our system 
formerly existing have, as is alleged, been swept away, 
and our experiment of elective self-government has 
consequently become a failure ; whether, in a word, 
the great design of Providence, to which I have alluded, 
in the discovery, settlement, political independence, 
and national growth of the United States, has been 
prematurely arrested by our perversity; or whether, 
on the contrary, that design is not, — with those vicis- 
situdes, and drawbacks, and human infirmities of char- 
acter, and uncertainties of fortune, which beset alike 
the individual man and the societies of men, in the 
old world and the new, — in a train of satisfactory, 
hopeful, nay, triumphant and glorious fulfilment. 

And in the first place I will say that, in my judg- 
ment, great delicacy ought to be observed and much 
caution practised in these disparaging commentaries on 
the constitution, laws, and administrations of friendly 



14 



states; and especially on the part of British and 
American statesmen in their comments on the sys- 
tems of their two countries, between which there is 
a more intimate connection of national sympathy 
than between any two other nations. I must say 
that, as a matter both of taste and expediency, these 
specific arraignments of a foreign friendly country 
had better be left to the public press. Without 
wishing to put any limit to free discussion, or to 
proscribe any expression of the patriotic complacency 
with which the citizens of one country are apt to 
assert the superiority of their own systems over 
those of all others, it appears to me that pungent 
criticisms on the constitutions and laws of foreign 
states, and their practical operation, supported by 
direct personal allusions to those called to administer 
them, are nearly as much out of place on the part 
of the legislative as of the executive branch of a 
government. On the part of the latter, they would 
be resented as an intolerable insult; they cannot be 
deemed less than offensive on the part of the 
former. 

If there were no other objection to this practice, 
it w T ould be sufficient, that its direct tendency is to 
recrimination ; a warfare of reciprocal disparagement, 
on the part of conspicuous members of the legisla- 
tures of friendly states. It is plain that a parlia- 
mentary warfare of this kind must greatly increase 



15 



the difficulty of carrying on the diplomatic discus- 
sions, which necessarily occur between states whose 
commercial and territorial interests touch and clash 
at so many points ; and the war of words is but too 
well adapted to prepare the public mind for more 
deplorable struggles. 

Let me further also remark, that the suggestion 
which I propose to combat, viz. that the experiment 
of self-government on the basis of an extensive elec- 
toral franchise is substantially a failure in the United 
States, and that the country has entered upon a 
course of rapid degeneracy since the days of Wash- 
ington, is not only one of great antecedent improb- 
ability, but it is one which, it might be expected, our 
brethren in England would be slow to admit. The 
mass of the population was originally of British 
origin, and the additional elements, of which it is 
made up, are from the other most intelligent and 
improvable races of Europe. The settlers of this 
Continent have been providentially conducted to it, 
or have grown up upon it. within a comparatively 
recent and highly enlightened period, namely, the last 
two hundred and fifty years. Much of it they found 
lying in a state of nature, with no time-honored 
abuses to eradicate ; abounding in most of the 
physical conditions of prosperous existence, and with 
few drawbacks but those necessarily incident to new 
countries, or inseparable from human imperfection. 



16 



Even the hardships they encountered, severe as they 
were, were well calculated to promote the growth 
of. the manly virtues. In this great and promising 
field of social progress, they have planted, in the 
main, those political institutions, which have approved 
themselves in the experience of modern Europe and 
especially of England, as most favorable to the pros- 
perity of a state ; — free representative governments ; 
— written constitutions and laws, greatly modelled 
upon hers, especially the trial by jury ; — a free and 
a cheap, and consequently all-pervading press ; — 
responsibility of the ruler to the people ; liberal pro- 
vision for popular education, and very general vol- 
untary and bountiful exjDenditure for the support of 
religion. If under these circumstances, the People of 
America, springing from such a stock, and trained in 
such a school, have failed to work out a satisfactory 
and a hopeful result ; and especially if within the 
last sixty years (for that is the distinct allegation) 
and consequently since, from the increase of numbers, 
wealth, and national power, all the social forces of 
the country have, for good or evil, been in higher 
action than ever before, there has been such marked 
deterioration that we are now fit to be held up, not 
as a model to be imitated, but as an example to be 
shunned, — not for the credit but for the discredit 
of popular institutions, — then, indeed, the case must 
be admitted to be a strange phenomenon in human 



affairs, — disgraceful, it is true, in the highest degree 
to us, — not reflecting credit on the race from which 
we are descended, — nor holding out encouragement 
anywhere for the adoption of liberal principles of 
government. If there is any feeling in England 
that can welcome the thought, that Americans have 
degenerated, the further reflection that it is the sons 
of Englishmen who have degenerated, must chasten 
the sentiment. If there is any country, where this 
supposed state of things should be readily believed 
to exist, surely it cannot be the parent country. 
If there is any place where such a suggestion should 
find ready credence, it cannot be in that House of 
Commons, where Burke uttered those golden words: 
" My hold of the Colonies is in the close affection 
which grows from common names, from kindred 
blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection." 
It cannot be in that House of Peers, where Chatham, 
conscious that the Colonies were fighting the battle 
not only of American but of English liberty, ex- 
claimed, with a fervor that almost caused the 
storied tapestry to quicken into life, "I rejoice that 
America has resisted." It must be in Venice, it 
must be in Naples, or wherever else on the face 
of the earth liberal principles are scoffed at, and 
constitutional freedom is known to exist, only as 
her crushed and mangled form is seen to twitch 
and quiver under the dark pall of arbitrary power. 



18 



Before admitting the truth of such a supposition, 
in itself so paradoxical, in its moral aspects so mourn- 
ful, in its natural influence on the progress of liberal 
ideas so discouraging, let us, for a few moments, look 

at facts. 

The first object in the order of events, after the 
discovery of America, was, of course, its settlement 
by civilized man. It was not an easy task ; — a 
mighty ocean separated the continent from the elder 
world; a savage wilderness covered most of the 
country ; its barbarous and warlike inhabitants resisted 
from the first all coalescence with the new comers. 
To subdue this waste, — to plant cornfields in the 
primeval forest, to transfer the civilization of Europe 
to the new world, and to make safe and sufficient 
arrangements, under political institutions, for the 
organized growth of free principles, — was the great 
problem to be solved. It was no holiday pastime, — 
no gainful speculation, — no romantic adventure ; but 
grim, persistent, weary toil and danger. That it 
has been upon the whole performed with wonderful 
success, who will deny ? Where else in the history 
of the world have such results been brought about 
in so short time ? And if I desired, as I do not, to 
give this discussion the character of recrimination, 
might I not, — dividing the period which has elapsed 
since the commencement of the European settlements 
in America into two portions, namely, the one which 



10 



preceded and the one which has followed the Dec- 
laration of Independence, the former under the sway 
of European governments, England, Holland, France, 
Spain, the latter under the government of the inde- 
pendent United States, — might I not claim for the 
latter, under all the disadvantages of a new govern- 
ment and limited resources, the credit of greatly 
superior energy and practical wisdom, in carrying 
on this magnificent work? It was the inherent vice 
of the colonial system, that the growth of the Amer- 
ican colonies was greatly retarded for a century, in 
consequence of their being involved in all the wars 
of Europe. There never was a period, on the other 
hand, since Columbus sailed from Palos, in which 
the settlement of the country has advanced with 
such rapidity as within the last sixty years. The 
commencement of the Revolution found us with a 
population not greatly exceeding two millions; the 
census of 1800 a little exceeded five millions; that 
of the present year will not probably fall short of 
thirty-two millions. The two centuries and a half 
which preceded the Revolution witnessed the organ- 
ization of thirteen Colonies, raised by the Declaration 
to States, to which the period that has since elapsed 
has added twenty more. I own it has filled me 
with amazement to find cities like Cincinnati and 
Louisville, Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis, not to 
mention those still more remote, on spots which 



20 



within the memory of man were frontier military 
posts ; — to find railroads and electric telegraphs 
traversing forests, in whose gloomy shades, as late 
as 1789, and in territories not more remote than 
the present State of Ohio, the wild savage still 
burned his captives at the stake. 

The desponding or the unfriendly censor will 
remind me of the blemishes of this tumultuous 
civilization; — outbreaks of frontier violence in earlier 
and later times; acts of injustice to the native 
tribes, (though the policy of the Government toward 
them has in the main been paternal and conscien- 
tiously administered,) the roughness of manners in 
infant settlements, the collisions of adventurers not 
yet compacted into a stable society, deeds of wild 
justice and wilder injustice, border license, lynch law. 
All these I admit and I lament ; — but a community 
cannot grow up at once from the log-cabin, with the 
wolf at the door and the savage in the neighboring 
thicket, into the order and beauty of communities 
which have been maturing for centuries. We must 
remember, too, that all these blemishes of an infant 
settlement, the inseparable accompaniment of that 
stage of progress and phase of society and life, have 
their counterpart at the other end of the scale, in 
the festering iniquities of large cities, the gigantic 
frauds of speculation and trade, the wholesale corrup- 
tion, in a word, of older societies, in all parts of the 



21 



world. When I reflect that the day we celebrate 
found us a feeble strip of thirteen Colonies along the 
coast, averaging at most a little more than 150,000 
inhabitants each ; and that this, its eighty-fourth 
return, sees us grown to thirty-three States, scattered 
through the interior and pushed to the Pacific, aver- 
aging nearly a million of inhabitants, — each a well- 
compacted representative republic, securing to its 
citizens a larger amount of the substantial blessings 
of life, than are enjoyed by equal numbers of people 
in the oldest and most prosperous States of Europe, 
I am lost in wonder; and, as a sufficient answer to 
all general charges of degeneracy, I am tempted to 
exclaim, Look around you. 

But, merely to fill up the wilderness with a pop- 
ulation provided with the ordinary institutions and 
carrying on the customary pursuits of civilized life, 
though surely no mean achievement, was not the 
whole of the work allotted to the United States, and 
thus far performed with signal activity, intelligence, 
and success. The Founders of America and their 
descendants have accomplished more and better 
things. On the basis of a rapid geographical exten- 
sion, and with the force of teeming numbers, they 
have, in the very infancy of their political existence, 
successfully aimed at higher progress in a generous 
civilization. The mechanical arts have not only been 
cultivated, but they have been cultivated with unusual 



22 



aptitude. Agriculture, Manufactures, Commerce, Nav- 
igation, whether by sails or steam, and the art of 
printing in all its forms and in all its applications, 
have been pursued with surprising skill. Great im- 
provements have been made in all these branches 
of industry, and in the machinery pertaining to 
them, which have been eagerly adopted in Europe. 
A more adequate provision has been made for pop- 
ular education, the great basis, humanly speaking 
of social improvement, than in almost any other 
country. I believe that in the cities of Boston, New 
York, and Philadelphia, more money, in proportion 
to the population, is raised by taxation for the support 
of common schools, than in any other cities in the 
world. There are more seminaries in the United 
States, where a decent academical education can be 
obtained, — more, I still mean in proportion to the 
population, — than in any other country except Ger- 
many. The Fine Arts have reached a high degree 
of excellence. The taste for music is rapidly spread- 
ing in town and country; and every year witnesses 
productions from the pencil and the chisel of American 
sculptors and painters, which would adorn any gallery 
in the world. Our Astronomers, Mathematicians, 
Naturalists, Chemists, Engineers, Jurists, Publicists, 
Historians, Poets, Novelists, and Lexicographers, have 
placed themselves on a level with their contemporaries 
abroad. The best dictionaries of the English language 



since that of Johnson, are those published in America. 
Our constitutions, whether of the United States or 
of the separate States, exclude all public provision 
for the maintenance of Religion, but in no part of 
Christendom is it more generously supported. Sacred 
Science is pursued as diligently and the pulpit com- 
mands as high a degree of respect in the United 
States, as in those countries where the Church is 
publicly endowed ; while the American Missionary 
operations have won the admiration of the civilized 
world. Nowhere, I am persuaded, are there more 
liberal contributions to public-spirited and charitable 
objects, — witness the remarkable article on that sub- 
ject, the second of the kind, by Mr. Eliot, in the last 
number of the North American Eeview. Our char- 
itable asylums, houses of industry, institutions for the 
education of deaf mutes and the blind, for the care 
of the pauper, and the discipline and reformation of 
the criminal, are nowhere surpassed. The latter led 
the way in the modern penitentiary reforms. In a 
word, there is no branch of the mechanical or fine 
arts, no department of science exact or applied, no 
form of polite literature, no description of social 
improvement, in which, due allowance being made 
for the means and resources at command, the progress 
of the United States has not been satisfactory, and 
in some respects astonishing. At this moment, the 
rivers and seas of the globe are navigated with that 



24 



marvellous application of steam as a propelling power, 
which was first practically effected by Fulton ; the mon- 
ster steamship which has just reached our shores, 
rides at anchor in the waters, in which the first 
successful experiment of Steam Navigation was made. 
The wheat harvest of England this summer will be 
gathered by American reapers ; the newspapers which 
lead the journalism of Europe are printed on American 
presses; there are imperial Railroads in Europe con- 
structed by American Engineers and travelled by 
American locomotives; troops armed with American 
weapons, and ships of war built in American dock- 
yards. In the factories of Europe there is machinery 
of American invention or improvement ; in their 
observatories, telescopes of American construction ; 
and apparatus of American invention for recording 
the celestial phenomena. America contests with 
Europe the introduction into actual use of the 
electric telegraph, and her mode of operating it is 
adopted throughout the French empire. American 
authors in almost every department of science and 
literature are found on the shelves of European 
libraries. It is true no American Homer, Virgil, 
Dante, Copernicus, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, New- 
ton, has risen on the world. These mighty geniuses 
seem to be exceptions in the history of the human 
mind. Favorable circumstances do not produce them, 
nor does the absence of favorable circumstances pre- 



25 



vent their appearance. Homer rose in the dawn 
of Grecian culture ; Virgil flourished in the Court 
of Augustus; Dante ushered in the birth of the 
modern European literature ; Copernicus was reared 
in a Polish cloister ; Shakespeare was trained in the 
greenroom of a theatre ; Milton was formed while 
the elements of English thought and life were fer- 
menting toward a great political and moral revolution ; 
Newton, under the profligacy of the Restoration. Ages 
may elapse before any country will produce a mind 
like these; as two centuries have passed since the 
last-mentioned of them was born. But if it is really 
a mark of inferiority on the part of the United States, 
that in the comparatively short period of their exist- 
ence as a people, they have not added another name 
to this illustrious list, (which is equally true of all 
the other nations of the earth,) they may proudly 
boast of one example of Life and Character, one 
career of disinterested service, one model of public 
virtue, one type of human excellence, of which all 
the countries and all the ages may be searched in 
vain for a parallel. I need not, — on this day I 
need not, — speak the peerless name. It is stamped 
on your hearts, it glistens in your eyes, it is written 
on every page of your history, on the battle-fields 
of the Revolution, on the monuments of your Fathers, 
on the portals of your capitols. It is heard in every 
breeze that whispers over the fields of Independent 



26 



America. And he was all our own. He grew up 
on the soil of America ; he was nurtured at her 
bosom. She loved and trusted him in his youth; 
she honored and revered him in his age ; and though 
she did not wait for death to canonize his name, his 
precious memory , with each succeeding year, has sunk 
more deeply into the hearts of his countrymen! 

But, as I have already stated, it was urged against 
us in substance on the occasion alluded to, that within 
the last sixty years the United States have degen- 
erated, and that by a series of changes, at first appar- 
ently inconsiderable, but all leading by a gradual and 
steady progression to the same result, a very discredit- 
able condition of things has been brought about in 
this country. 

Without stating precisely what these supposed 
changes are, the " result " is set forth in a somewhat 
remarkable series of reproachful allegations, far too 
numerous to be repeated in detail, in what remains of 
this address, but implying in the aggregate little less 
than the general corruption of the country, — political, 
social, and moral. The severity of these reproaches 
is not materially softened by a few courteous words 
of respect for the American People. I shall in a 
moment select for examination two or three of the 
most serious of these charges, observing only at 
present that the prosperous condition of the country, 
which I have imperfectly sketched, and especially its 



27 



astonishing growth, during the present century in the 
richest products, material and intellectual, of a rapidly 
maturing civilization, furnish a sufficient defence 
against the general charge. Men do not gather the 
grapes and figs of science, art, taste, wealth, and 
manners from the thorns and thistles of lawlessness, 
venality, fraud, and violence. These fair fruits grow 
only in the gardens of public peace, and industry 
protected by the Law. 

In the outset let it be observed then, that the 
assumed and assigned cause of the reproachful and 
deplorable state of things alleged to exist in the 
United States is as imaginary, as the effects are 
exaggerated or wholly unfounded in fact. The 
" checks established by Washington and his associates 
on an unbalanced democracy " in the general govern- 
ment have never, as is alleged, " been swept away," 
— not one of them. The great constitutional check 
of this kind, as far as the General Government is 
concerned, is the limitation of the granted powers of 
Congress ; the reservation of the rights of the States ; 
and the organization of the Senate as their represent- 
ative. These constitutional provisions, little compre- 
hended abroad, which give to the smallest States equal 
weight with the largest, in one branch of the national 
legislature, impose a very efficient check on the 
power of a numerical majority; and neither in this 
nor in any other provision of the Constitution, bearing 



28 



on the subject, has the slightest change ever been 
made. Not only so, but the prevalent policy since 
1800 has been in favor of the reserved rights of the 
States, and in consequent derogation of the powers of 
the General Government. In fact, when the Reform 
Bill was agitated in England, and by the conservative 
statesmen of that country stigmatized as "a revolution," 
it was admitted that the United States possessed in 
their written Constitution, and in the difficulty of 
procuring amendments to it, a conservative principle 
unknown to the English government. 

In truth, if by " an unbalanced democracy " is meant 
such a government as that of Athens, or republican 
Rome, or the Italian Republics, or the English Com- 
monwealth, or revolutionary France, there not only 
never Avas, but never can be such a thing in the United 
States, unless our whole existing system should be 
revolutionized, and that in a direction to which there 
never has been the slightest approach. The very fact 
that the great mass of the population is broken up 
into separate States, now thirty-three in number and 
rapidly multiplying, each with its local interests and 
centre of political influence, is itself a very efficient 
check on such a democracy. Then each of these 
States is a representative commonwealth, composed of 
two branches, with the ordinary divisions of executive, 
legislative, and judicial power. It is true, that in some 
of the States, some trifling property qualifications for 



20 



eligibility and the exercise of the elective franchise 
have been abrogated, but not with any perceptible 
effect on the number or character of the voters. The 
system, varying a little in the different States, always 
made a near approach to universal suffrage ; and the 
great increase of voters has been caused by the 
increase of population. Under elective governments, 
with a free press, with ardent party divisions, and 
in reference to questions that touch the heart of the 
people, petty limitations on the right of suffrage are 
indeed 'cobwebs,' which the popular will breaks 
through. The voter may be one of ten, or one of 
fifty of the citizens, but on such questions he will vote 
in conformity with the will of the great mass. If he 
resists it, the government itself, like that of France in 
1848, will go down. Agitation and popular commotion 
scoff at checks and balances, and as much in England 
as in America. When Nottingham Castle is in ruins 
and half Bristol a heap of ashes, monarchs and minis- 
ters must bend. The Reform Bill must then pass 
"through Parliament or over it," in the significant 
words of Lord Macaulay ; and that, whether the 
constituencies are great or small. That a restricted 
suffrage and a limited constituency do not always 
insure independence on the part of the Representative, 
may be inferred from the rather remarkable admission 
of Lord Grey, in this very debate, that "a large 
proportion of the members of the present House of 



30 



Commons are, from various circumstances, afraid to act 
on their real opinions" on the subject of the Reform Bill 
then before them. 

I have already observed that it would be impossible, 
within the limits of this address, to enter into a 
detailed examination of all the matters laid to our 
charge, on the occasion alluded to. The ministerial 
leader (Lord Granville) candidly admitted, in the 
course of the debate, that, though he concurred with 
his brother peer in some of his remarks, " they were 
generally much exaggerated." We too must admit 
with regret, that for some of the statements made to 
our discredit, there is a greater foundation in fact, than 
we could wish; that our political system, like all 
human institutions, however wise in theory and 
successful in its general operation, is liable to abuse ; 
that party, the bane of all free governments, works its 
mischief here ; that some bad men are raised to office 
and some good men excluded from it; that public 
virtue here as elsewhere sometimes breaks down under 
the temptation of place or of gold ; that unwise laws 
are sometimes passed by our legislatures, and unpopu- 
lar laws sometimes violated by the mob ; in short, that 
the frailties and vices of men and of governments are 
displayed in Republics as they are in Monarchies, in 
the New World as in the Old ; whether to a greater, 
equal, or less degree, time must show. The question 
of the great Teacher, to which the reverend Chap- 



31 



lain has just called our attention, may as pertinently 
be asked of Nations as of individuals, " Why beholdest 
thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, and 
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? " 

An honest and impartial administration of justice 
is the corner-stone of the social system. The most 
serious charges brought against us, on the occasion 
alluded to, are, that, owing to the all-pervading cor- 
ruption of the country, the Judges of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, who once commanded the 
public respect at home and abroad, are now ap- 
pointed for party purposes, and that some of their 
decisions have excited the disgust of all hi^h-minded 
men ; that the Judges of most of the State Courts 
hold their offices by election, some by annual elec- 
tion ; that the undisputed dominion of the numerical 
majority, which has been established, will not allow 
the desires and passions of the hour to be checked 
by a firm administration of justice; and that in con- 
sequence the laws in this country have become mere 
cobwebs to resist either the rich, or the popular feel- 
ing of the moment ; in a word that the American 
Astrsea, like the goddess of old, has fled to the stars. 
I need not say, fellow-citizens, in your hearing, that 
wherever else this may be true, (and I believe it to 
be nowhere true in the United States,) it is not true 
in our ancient commonwealth ; and that Westminster 
Hall never boasted a Court more honored or more 






worthy of honor, than that which holds its office 
by a life tenure and administers impartial justice, 
without respect of persons, to the people of Massa- 
chusetts. 

Such a court the people of Massachusetts have no 
wish to change for an elective judiciary, holding 
office by a short tenure. In their opinion, evinced 
in their practice, this all-important branch of the gov- 
ernment ought to be removed, as far as possible, 
beyond the reach of political influences; but it is 
surely the grossest of errors to speak of the tribunals 
of the United States as being generally tainted with 
party, or to represent the law, in the main, as having 
ceased to be respected and enforced. Taking a com- 
prehensive view of the subject, and not drawing 
sweeping inferences from exceptional occurrences, it 
may be safely said that the law of the land is ably, 
cheaply, and impartially administered in the United 
States, and implicitly obeyed. On a few questions, not 
half a dozen in number since the organization of the 
government, and those partaking of a political charac- 
ter, the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, like the questions to which they refer, have 
divided public opinion. But there is surely no tribunal 
in the world, which, like that court has, since the foun- 
dation of the government, not only efficiently per- 
formed the ordinary functions of a tribunal of the last 
resort, to the general satisfaction of the country, but 



;::; 



which sits in judgment on the courts and legislatures 
of sovereign States, on acts of Congress itself, and pro- 
nounces the law to a confederation coextensive with 
Europe. I know of no such protection, under any 
other government, against unconstitutional legislation; 
if, indeed, any legislation can be called unconstitu- 
tional, where Parliament, alike in theory and practice, 
is omnipotent. 

With respect to the partisan character of our courts, 
inferred from the manner in which the judges are ap- 
pointed, the judges of the United States Courts, which 
are the tribunals specifically reflected on, are appointed 
in the same manner and hold their offices by the same 
tenure, as the English judges of the courts of common 
law. They are appointed for life, by the executive 
power, no doubt from the dominant party of the day, 
and this equally in both countries. The presiding 
magistrate of the other branch of English jurispru- 
dence, — the Lord Chancellor, — is displaced with 
every change in politics. In seventy-one years, since 
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there have 
been but four chief justices of the United States, 
and the fourth is still on the bench. In thirty-three 
years there have been, I believe, nine appointments 
of a Lord Chancellor, on as many changes of the 
ministry, and seven different individuals have filled 
the office, of whom five are living. As a member 
of the Cabinet, and Speaker of the House of Lords, 



34 



lie is necessarily deep in all the political controversies 
of the day, and his vast official influence and patron- 
age, generally administered on political grounds, are 
felt throughout church and state. The Chief Justice 
of England is usually a member of the House of Lords, 
sometimes a member of the Cabinet. As a necessary 
consequence, on all questions of a political nature, the 
Court is open to the same suspicion of partisanship as 
in the United States, and for a much stronger reason, 
inasmuch as our judges can never be members of the 
Cabinet or of Congress. During a considerable part of 
his career, Lord Mansfield was engaged in an embit- 
tered political warfare with the Earl of Chatham, in 
the House of Lords. All the resources of the English 
language were exhausted by Junius, in desolating and 
unpunished party libels on the Chief Justice of Eng- 
land ; and when the capital of the British Empire lay 
for six days at the mercy of Lord George Gordon's 
mob, its fury was concentrated against the same vener- 
able magistrate. 

The jurisprudence of this country strikes its roots 
deep into that of England. Her courts, her magis- 
trates, her whole judicial system, are regarded by the 
profession in America with respect and affection. But 
if, beginning at a period coeval with the settlement of 
America, we run down the line of the chancellors and 
chief justices, from Lord Bacon and Sir Edward Coke 
to the close of the last century, it will, in scarce any 



35 



generation, be found free from the record of personal, 
official, and political infirmities, from which an un- 
friendly censor might have drawn inferences hostile 
to the integrity of the tribunals of England, if not to 
the soundness of her public sentiment. But he would 
have erred. The character of governments and of in- 
stitutions is not to be judged of from individual men 
or exceptional occurrences, but must be gathered from 
a large experience, from general results, from the testi- 
mony of ages. A thousand years, and a revolution in 
almost every century, have been necessary to build 
up the constitutional fabric of England to its present 
proportions and strength. Let her not play the 
uncharitable censor, if portions of our newly con- 
structed state machinery are sometimes heard to 
grate and jar. 

With respect to the great two-edged sword, with 
which Justice smites the unfaithful public servant, 
the present Lord Chancellor (late Chief Justice) of 
England, observes, of the acquittal of Lord Melville, in 
1806, that "it showed that Impeachment can no longer 
be relied upon for the conviction of state offences, 
and can only be considered as a ted of party strength;" 
while of the standard of professional literature, the 
same venerable magistrate, who unites the vigor of 
youth to the experience and authority of fourscore 
years, remarks, with a candor, it is true, not very flat- 
tering to the United States, in the form of the expres- 



36 



sion, that down to the end of the reign of George the 
Third (a. d. 1820), "England was excelled by contem- 
porary juridical authors, not only in France, Italy, and 
Germany, but even America." I will only add, that, of 
the very great number of judges of our Federal and 
State Courts, — although frugal salaries, short terms of 
office, and the elective tenure may sometimes have 
called incompetent men to the bench, — it is not within 
my recollection, that a single individual has been sus- 
pected even of pecuniary corruption. 

Next in importance to the integrity of the courts, 
in a well-governed state, is the honesty of the 
legislature. A remarkable instance of wholesale cor- 
ruption, in one of the new States of the West, 
consisting of the alleged bribery of a considerable 
number of the members of the legislature, by a 
distribution of Railroad bonds, is quoted by Lord Grey, 
as a specimen of the corruption which has infected 
the legislation both of Congress and of the States, 
and as showing " the state of things which has arisen 
in that country." It was a very discreditable occur- 
rence certainly, (if truly reported, and of that I 
know nothing,) illustrative I hope, not of "a state 
of things," which has arisen in America, but of the 
degree to which large bodies of men, of whom better 
things might have been expected, may sometimes 
become so infected, when the mania of speculation 
is epidemic, that principle, prudence, and common 



61 



sense give way, in the eagerness to clutch at sudden 
wealth. In a bubble season, the ordinary rules of 
morality lose their controlling power for a while, 
under the temptation of the day. The main current 
of public and private morality in England, probably 
flowed as deep and strong as ever, both before and 
after the South Sea frauds, when Cabinet ministers 
and Court ladies, and some of the highest personages 
in the realm ran mad after dishonest gains, and this 
in England's Augustan age. Lord Granville in reply 
observed that the " early legislation of England, in 
such matters, [Railways,] was not so free from 
reproach, as to justify us in attributing the bribery 
in America solely to the democratic character of the 
government," and the biographer of George Stephen- 
son furnishes facts which abundantly confirm the truth 
of this remark. After describing the extravagant 
length to which Railway speculation was carried in 
that country in 1844-1845, Mr. Smiles proceeds: — 

" Parliament, whose previous conduct in connection with Rail- 
way legislation was so open to reprehension, interposed no check, 
attempted no remedy. On the contrary, it helped to intensify the 
evil arising from this unseemly state of things. Many of its mem- 
bers were themselves involved in the mania, and as much inter- 
ested in its continuance as even the vulgar herd of money-grubbers. 
The railway prospectuses now issued, unlike the Liverpool and 
Manchester and London and Birmingham schemes, were headed 
by peers, baronets, landed proprietors, and strings of M. P.'s. Thus 
it was found in 1 845, that not fewer than one hundred and fifty- 



18 



seven members of Parliament were on the list of new companies, 
as subscribers for sums ranging from two hundred and ninety-one 
thousand pounds sterling [not far from a million and a half of 
dollars] downwards ! The proprietors of new lines even came to 
boast of their parliamentary strength, and the number of votes 
they could command in ' the House.' The influence which land- 
owners had formerly brought to bear upon Parliament, in resisting 
railways, when called for by the public necessities, was now employed 
to carry measures of a far different kind, originated by cupidity, 
knavery, and folly. But these gentlemen had discovered, by this 
time, that railways were as a golden mine to them. They sat at 
railway boards, sometimes selling to themselves their own land, at 
their own price, and paying themselves with the money of the 
unfortunate stockholders. Others used the railway mania as a 
convenient, and to themselves inexpensive, mode of purchasing con- 
stituencies. It was strongly suspected that honorable members 
adopted what Yankee legislators call ' log-rolling • ' that is, ' you 
help me to roll my log, and I will help you to roll yours.' At all 
events, it is a matter of fact that, through parliamentary influence, 
many utterly ruinous branches and extensions, projected during the 
mania, calculated only to benefit the inhabitants of a few miserable 
old boroughs, accidentally omitted from schedule A, were authorized 
in the memorable session of 1844—45." * 

These things, be it remembered;, took place, not in 
a newly gathered republic, just sprouting, so to say, 
into existence on the frontier, inhabited by the pio- 
neers of civilization, who had rather rushed together, 
than grown up to the moral traditions of an ancient 
community; but they took place at the metropolis 
of one of the oldest monarchies in Europe, the centre 

* Smiles's I>ife of Stephenson. \>. 371. 



39 



of the civilized world, where public sentiment is prop- 
ped by the authority of ages; heart of old English 
oak encased with the life circles of a thousand years. 
I was in London at the height of the mania ; I saw 
the Railway King, as he was called, at the zenith 
of his power ; a member of Parliament, through 
which he walked quietly, it was said, "with some 
sixteen railway bills under his arm ; " almost a fourth 
estate of the realm ; his receptions crowded like 
those of a Royal Prince ; — and I saw the gilded 
bubble burst. But I did not write home to my 
government, that this marvellous "state of things" 
showed the corruption which springs from hereditary 
institutions, nor did I hint that an extension of the 
right of suffrage and a moderate infusion of the 
democratic principle were the only remedy. 

I have time for a few words only on the " unscrupu- 
lous and overbearing tone " which is said by Lord 
Grey to " mark our intercourse with foreign nations." 

" If any one European nation," he observes, " were to act in the 
same manner, it could not escape war for a single year. We our- 
selves have been repeatedly on the verge of a quarrel with the 
United States. With no divergence of interest, but the strongest 
possible interest on both sides to maintain the closest friendship, 
we have more than once been on the eve of a quarrel ; and that 
great calamity has now been avoided, because the government of 
this country has had the good sense to treat the government of the 
United States much as we should treat spoiled children, and 
though the right was clearly on our side, has yielded to the 



40 



unreasonable pretensions of the United States. There is danger 
that this may be pushed too far, and that a cpuestion may arise, on 
which our honor and our interests will make concession on our part 
impossible." 

No one is an impartial judge in his own case. 
If we should meet these rather indiscreet suggestions 
in the only way in which a charge without specifi- 
cations can be met, — by a denial as broad as the 
assertion, — the matter would be left precisely as 
it stood before ; that is, each party in its national 
controversies thinks itself right and its opponent 
wrong, which is not an uncommon case in human 
affairs, public and private. This at least may be 
added, without fear of contradiction, that the United 
States, in their intercourse with foreign governments 
have abstained from all interference in European 
politics, and have confined themselves to the protec- 
tion of their own rights and interests. As far as 
concerns theoretical doctrines on the subjects usually 
controverted between governments, a distinguished 
English magistrate and civilian pronounces the 
authority of the United States "to be always great 
upon all questions of International Law." ::: Many of 
the questions which have arisen between this country 
and England, have been such as most keenly touch 
the national susceptibilities. That in discussing these 
questions, at home and abroad, no despatch has 

* R. PhiTJimore's International Law, vol. iii. p. 252. 



41 



been written, no word uttered, in a warmer tone 
than might be wished, is not to be expected, and is 
as little likely to have happened on one side of the 
water as the other. But that the intercourse of the 
United States with Great Britain has, in the main, 
been conducted, earnestly indeed, as becomes power- 
ful States treating important subjects, but cour- 
teously, gravely, and temperately, no one well 
acquainted with the facts will, I think, deny. 

It would not be difficult for me to pass in review 
our controversies with England, and to show that 
when she has conceded any portion of our demands, 
it has not been because they were urged in a an 
unscrupulous and overbearing tone," (an idea not 
very complimentary to herself,) but because they 
were founded in justice and sustained by argument. 
This is not the occasion for such a review. In a 
public address, which I had the honor of delivering 
in this hall last September, I vindicated the ne- 
gotiations relative to the Northeastern Boundary, 
from the gross and persistent misrepresentations of 
which they have been the subject ; and I will now 
only briefly allude to by far the most important 
chapter in our diplomatic history. I go back to 
it, because, after the lapse of a generation, the truth 
has at length pierced through the mists of contem- 
porary interest and passion, and because it will suffi- 
ciently show by one very striking example, whether 



42 



in her intercourse with foreign nations, America has 
been in the habit of assuming an unscrupulous and 
overbearing tone, or whether she has been the victim 
of those qualities on the part of others. 

After the short-lived peace of Amiens, a new war, 
of truly Titanic proportions, broke out between 
France and England. In the progress of this tre- 
mendous struggle, and for the purpose of mutual 
destruction, a succession of Imperial decrees and 
Koj'al Orders in Council were issued by the two 
powers, by which all neutral commerce was anni- 
hilated. Each of the great belligerents maintained 
that his adversary's decree was a violation of Inter- 
national Law ; each justified his own edict on the 
ground of retaliation, which of course as far as the 
neutral was concerned was no justification ; — and 
between these great conflicting forces the rights and 
interests of neutrals were crushed. Under these 
orders and decrees, it is estimated that one hundred 
millions of American property were swept from the 
ocean ; — of the losses and sufferings of our citizens, 
in weary detention for years at Courts of Admiralty 
and Vice-Admiralty all round the globe, there can 
be no estimate. But peace returned to the world ; 
time wore away ; and after one generation of the 
original sufferers had sunk, many of them sorrow- 
stricken and ruined, into the grave, the government 
of King Louis Philippe, in France, acknowledged the 



43 



wrong of the Imperial regime, by a late and partial 
measure of indemnification, obtained by means of 
the treaty negotiated with great ability, by Mr. 
Rives, of Virginia. England, in addition to the 
capture of our ships and the confiscation of their 
cargoes, had subjected the United States to the 
indignity of taking her seamen by impressment 
from our vessels, — a practice which, in addition to 
its illegality even under the law of England, and 
its cruelty, which have since, caused it to be aban- 
doned at home, often led to the impressment of 
our own citizens, both naturalized and native. For 
this intolerable wrong (which England herself would 
not have endured a clay, from any foreign power), 
and for the enormous losses accruing under the 
Orders in Council, the United States not only never 
received any indemnification, but the losses and 
sufferings of a war of two years and a half dura- 
tion, to which she was at length driven, were 
superadded. These orders were at the time regarded 
by the liberal school of British statesmen as unjust 
and oppressive towards neutrals ; and though the 
eminent civilian, Sir William Scott (afterwards Lord 
Stowell), who presided in the British Court of Ad- 
miralty, and who had laid the foundations of a 
princely fortune by fees accruing in prize causes,* 

* Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon, by William Edward Surtees, D.C.L. 
[a relative], p. 88. 



44 



deemed it " extreme indecency" to admit the pos- 
sibility, that the Orders in Council could be in 
contravention of the public law, it is now the 
almost universal admission of the text-writers, that 
such was the case. As lately as 1847, the present 
Lord Chancellor, — then Lord Chief Justice of Eng- 
land, — used this remarkable language : " Of these 
Orders in Council, Napoleon had no right to com- 
plain ; but they were grievously unjust to neutrals ; 
and it is noiv generally allozved, that they ivere contrary 
to the law of nations, and to our oivn municipal laiv I " 

These liberal admissions have come too late to 
repair the ruined fortunes or to heal the broken hearts 
of the sufferers: they will not recall to life the 
thousands who fell on hard-fought fields, in defence of 
their country's rights. But they do not come too late 
to rebuke the levity with which it is now intimated, 
that the United States stand at the august bar of the 
Public Law, not as reasoning men, but as spoiled 
children; not too late to suggest the possibility to 
candid minds, that the next generation may do us 
the like justice, with reference to more recent 
controversies/ 1 ' 

Thus, Fellow-Citizens, I have endeavored, without 
vainglorying, with respect to ourselves, or bitterness 

* Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 218: Story's Miscellaneous 
Writings, p. 283; Phillimore's International Law, vol. iii. pp. 250, 539 ; Manning's Com- 
mentary on the Law of Nations, p. 330; AVildnian's Institutes of International Law 
vol. ii. pp. 183, 185 ; also, the French publicists, Hautefeuille and Ortolan, under the 
appropriate heads. 



45 



toward others, but in a spirit of candor and patriotism, 
to repel the sinister intimation, that a fatal degeneracy 
is stealing over the country; and to show that the 
eighty-fourth anniversary finds the United States in 
the fulfilment of the glowing anticipations, w T ith which, 
in the self-same instrument, their Independence was 
inaugurated, and their Union first proclaimed. No 
formal act had as yet bound them together ; no plan 
of confederation had even been proposed. A common 
allegiance embraced them, as parts of one metropolitan 
empire ; but when that tie was sundered, they became 
a group of insulated and feeble communities, not 
politically connected with each other, nor known as 
yet in the family of nations. Driven by a common 
necessity, yearning toward each other with a common 
sympathy of trial and of danger, piercing with wise 
and patriotic foresight into the depths of ages yet to 
come, — led by a Divine Counsel, — they clung together 
with more than elective affinity, and declared the 
independence of the United States. North and South, 
great and small, Massachusetts and Virginia, the oldest 
and then the largest; New York and Pennsylvania, 
unconscious as yet of their destined preponderance, 
but already holding the central balance ; Rhode Island 
and Delaware, raised by the Union to a political 
equality with their powerful neighbors, joined with 
their sister republics in the august Declaration, for 
themselves and for the rapidly multiplying family of 



4fi 



States, which they beheld in prophetic vision. This 
great charter of independence was the life of the 
Revolution; the sword of attack, the panoply of 
defence. Under the consummate guidance of Wash- 
ington, it sustained our fathers under defeat, and 
guided them to victory. It gave us the alliance with 
France, and her auxiliary armies and navies. It gave 
us the Confederation and the Constitution. With 
successive strides of progress, it has crossed the Al- 
leghanies, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri ; 
has stretched its living arms almost from the Arctic 
circle to the tepid waters of the Gulf; has belted the 
continent with rising States; has unlocked the rich 
treasuries of the Sierra Madre ; and flung out the 
banners of the Republic to the gentle breezes of the 
Peaceful Sea. Not confined to the continent, the 
power of the Union has convoyed our commerce over 
the broadest oceans to the furthest isles ; has opened 
the gates of the Morning to our friendly intercourse ; 
and — sight unseen before in human history — has, 
from that legendary Cipango, the original object of 
the expedition of Columbus, but which his eyes never 
beheld nor his keels ever touched, brought their 
swarthy princes on friendly embassage, to the western 
shores of the world-dividing Deep. 

Meantime, the gallant Frenchmen, who fought the 
battles of liberty on this continent, carried back the 
generous contagion to their own fair land. Would 



47 



that they could have carried with it the moderation 
and the wisdom that tempered our Revolution ! The 
great idea of constitutional reform in England, a 
brighter jewel in her crown than that of which our 
fathers bereft it, is coeval with the successful issue of 
the American struggle. The first appeal of revolution- 
ary Greece, an appeal not made in vain, was for 
American sympathy and aid. The golden vice-royal- 
ties of Spain on this continent asserted their independ- 
ence in imitation of our example, though sadly want- 
ing our previous training in the school of regulated 
liberty ; and now, at length, the fair " Niobe of 
Nations," accepting a constitutional monarchy as an 
instalment of the long-deferred debt of Freedom, 
sighs through all her liberated States for a represent- 
ative confederation, and claims the title of the Italian 
Washington for her heroic Garibaldi. 

Here then, fellow-citizens, I close where I began ; 
the noble prediction of Adams is fulfilled. The ques- 
tion decided eighty-four years ago in Philadelphia 
was the greatest question ever decided in America ; 
and the event has shown that greater, perhaps, never 
was nor ever will be decided among men. The great 
Declaration, with its life-giving principles, has, within 
that interval, extending its influence from the central 
plains of America to the eternal snows of the Cor- 
dilleras, from the western shores of the Atlantic to 
the furthest East, crossed the land and the sea, and 



48 



circled the globe. Nor let us fear that its force is 
exhausted, for its principles are as broad as humanity, 
as eternal as truth. And if the visions of patriotic 
seers are destined to be fulfilled ; if it is the will of 
Providence that the lands which now sit in darkness 
shall see the day ; that the south and east of Europe 
and the west of Asia shall be regenerated; and the 
ancient and mysterious regions of the East, the cradle 
of mankind, shall receive back in these latter days 
from the West the rich repayment of the early debt 
of civilization, and rejoice in the cheerful light of 
constitutional freedom, — that light will go forth from 
Independence Hall in Philadelphia ; that lesson of 
constitutional freedom they will learn from this day's 
Declaration. 



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